Thank you very much, Madam Joint Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses. It is a very difficult subject.
I appreciate this as a parent, first and foremost. I think the difficulty is that parents are driven by a desire to protect their children, but at the same time are juxtaposing that with a child who might be undergoing obvious suffering.
I guess we are lucky in a way, in that each of our provinces already have provincial laws in place, health care laws in place. In my home province of British Columbia, they state, “In general, parental consent for health care in BC is sought for children 12 years of age and younger. However, there is no legal age of consent”. Basically, “'Mature minor consent' is the consent a child or youth gives to receive health care after the child has been assessed by a healthcare provider as having the necessary understanding to give consent.”
Dr. Morrison, I know it's not so much tied to an age. It's tied to the general understanding that the child has.
Can you, first of all, give us an example? When a child comes in with their parents, how do you guide that relationship? Do you have a time when you sit down with the child alone? Can you give us an example of the types of questions that are asked to try to assess whether that child has an understanding of what's coming their way?